A Map of the Dark

To save a missing girl, FBI Agent Elsa Myers may have to lose herself…

“I absolutely love when I find a new mystery series to follow and enjoy!… I just couldn’t stop reading… I loved the characters and want more! 4 out of 5 stars.” Booked on a Feeling

Even as her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, FBI Agent Elsa Myers can’t ignore a call for help. A teenage girl has disappeared from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads obscures the fact that she did not go willingly.

As the hours tick by, and the search becomes a hunt for a man who may have been killing for years, Elsa’s carefully compartmentalized world collapses around her. She finds missing people, but she knows too well how it feels to be lost. Everything she has buried–her fraught relationship with her sister and niece, her self-destructive past, her mother’s death–threatens to resurface, with devastating consequences.

Can our most painful childhood secrets be forgotten? Or will they always find their way back into our adult lives? These questions lie at the heart of A Map of the Dark, a riveting portrait of a woman haunted by her family legacy, and a race-against-time thriller. Perfect for fans of Tana French, Megan Abbott, and Lisa Gardner.

What readers are saying about A Map of the Dark:

“This book was so good on so many levels.… Fantastic read, highly recommended.” For The Love Of Books

“Loved this! A Map of the Dark has a super lead character who harnesses her own demons in order to help solve the case of three missing girls. I couldn’t get up from my chair until I’d read it all!” Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars

“Sometimes you find, amidst all the ‘new and wonderful series’ a book that marks the start of a series you think you will really like. This is such a book… It even brought a tear to my eyes. And it is not every day that I read a book that has this effect on me.” Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars

“Wow, this was such a fast paced read… A Map of the Dark is an exciting start to a new series which I will certainly be keeping an eye on.” Hooked From Page One

The Searchers

What's Inside

Q&A: Karen Ellis and Alison Gaylin

Gaylin: Elsa is such a fascinating and complicated character. How did you first come up with the idea for her?

Ellis: My mother had just died rather unexpectedly, and writing about someone grappling with unresolved issues with a dead parent felt like an imperative at the time. It was just so overwhelming and I had to write it out, so I gave it to Elsa. Poor Elsa—because as the drafts piled up her own conflicts became worlds more dire than mine ever were, in every way.

Gaylin: There are actually two powerful mysteries playing out within A Map of the Dark—that of the girls who go missing and that of Elsa’s dark past, yet neither one overshadows the other. Was it difficult to achieve this balance, and either way, how did you do it?

Ellis: It was something that evolved as I set out to write the book. I began to realize that there were distinct storylines that needed to resonate against each other as the novel developed: the plight of the missing girls and Special Agent Elsa Myers’s search for them in collaboration with Detective Lex Cole, and Elsa’s personal story in which her father’s terminal illness triggers devastating childhood memories that begin to inform the ongoing case. It was a tricky balancing act, and I ended up writing the storylines individually and then weaving them together. I’d never approached a novel that way before and wasn’t sure if it would work, but I found that it allowed me to fully inhabit each distinctive voice before moving on to the next one.